The government is to create a new CFO post to oversee the management of public finances and drive reforms by combining the existing role of Head of the Government Finance Profession with that of the Treasury's Director General Public Spending, following publication of its Financial Management Review (FMR).
The review looked at options to strengthen financial management and leadership across government.
Its proposals include the CFO position, which will have a formal management relationship with all the heads of finance across departments and report directly to Sharon White, second Permanent Secretary to the Treasury.
Recruitment will start in the New Year, with the job open to candidates from both the public and private sector.
Helen Brand, chief executive of ACCA, welcomed the FMR and said creating a CFO role would help provide more consistency of approach to financial management in government.
'Strong financial leadership is essential for driving even higher standards in Whitehall, and the proposed role has the potential to bring strong and visible leadership for financial management that will allow finance to better support decision-making across Whitehall. In a time of financial constraint, it's pleasing that the government recognises the value of the finance profession for driving through change and delivering value for money,' Brand said.
The government has also accepted the FMR's other recommendations that the Treasury should lead work to improve the consistency and quality of management accounting practices and reporting across government. This includes developing and using a framework so departments can take greater responsibility for some areas of expenditure that are currently controlled centrally, and a project to better align existing systems and processes around public expenditure.
Gillian Russell, public sector finance partner and head of Deloitte's public sector finance leaders programme, said: 'The focus on the provision of high quality, timely management information is critical to the successful realisation of the value for money agenda.
'Government holds huge amounts of data and it is crucial that better use is made of this underexplored resource. In addition to traditional financial reporting, we would expect that analytic techniques could play an increasingly widespread role in understanding, and managing, the links between resources and outputs.'
